PLG Young Artists at the Purcell Room, London SE1

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For an organisation devoted to the promotion of new talent, the Park Lane
Group’s January showcase concerts have been remarkably resistant to change.
So have the audiences’ make-up: critics, performers’ friends and families,
composers. Always the same potted plants; nothing growing wild.

But now, a shake-up! The evenings are slimmed down with talks and
masterclasses, and programmes are organised almost like Facebook, with the
composers linked by artistic affinity. The format is much more
user-friendly, though the works themselves can still throw up barbed wire
and disfigure the young performers. I pitied cellist Anna Menzies the most,
forced to put